Website Name

Year Published

Title

URL

Access Date

February 18, 2018

Publisher

A+E Networks

In a plenary session of the Versailles peace conference on this day in 1919, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson presents the draft of the covenant for the League of Nations prepared by a League commission that had been established two weeks earlier.

The commission, which was set up on January 25 and had its first meeting on February 4, had tackled the formidable task of laying down the specific tenets of Wilson’s ambitious but nebulous vision—expressed in his famous Fourteen Points—of an international organization that would regulate future conflicts between nations and preserve world peace. At its start, the commission included two representatives from each of the Big Five nations (Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the United States); nine more representatives were eventually added from the other countries present at the peace conference.

Tensions flared during the commission’s deliberations, particularly over the issues of general disarmament and the establishment of an international military force to give the League the power to enforce its principles. The French argued strongly in favor of both; the U.S. and Britain disagreed, suspicious of continued French aggression against Germany and unwilling to cede control of their own military operations to the League.

Despite these difficulties, Wilson was able to present the commission’s draft in less than two weeks. In it, the commission had outlined all aspects of the League, including its administration: a general assembly, a secretariat and an executive council. There would be no League army and no mandate for disarmament—France had lost on these points. The French had held fast, however, in their insistence that Germany not be invited to join the League right away; this would later force a frustrated Germany to agree, in the Treaty of Versailles, to the formation of an organization that it could not join. (Germany joined the League in 1926; in 1933, after the rise to power of the National Socialist or Nazi Party, it withdrew.)

With a few modifications, the covenant was approved in another plenary session of the conference on April 28. Many terrible things have come out of this war, Wilson had said as he presented the draft of the League covenant, but some very beautiful things have come out of it. In Wilson’s idealistic vision, the League of Nations was intended to be the most beautiful of these things, but in practice it failed to live up to expectations. For one thing, the Treaty of Versailles was never ratified by the U.S. Senate, largely because of opposition to the League covenant’s Article X, which required that all League members preserve the territorial independence of all other members and commit to joint military action, when necessary, in order to do this.

The absence of the U.S. in the League of Nations, as well as the covenant’s requirement that all League decisions be unanimous, greatly detracted from the organization’s efficacy, and within two decades, the world would again be at war. Ultimately, the League’s greatest legacy would not be its ability to keep the peace, but the groundwork it laid for another international organization: the United Nations, which would borrow some of the League’s organizational principles and, perhaps more importantly, learn from its mistakes.

Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!

Also on this day

On February 14around the year 278A.D., Valentine, a holy priest in Rome in the days of Emperor Claudius II, was executed.
Under the rule of Claudius the Cruel, Rome was involved in many unpopular and bloody campaigns. The emperor had to maintain a strong army, but was having a difficult time...

A Patriot militia force of 340 led by Colonel Andrew Pickens of South Carolina with Colonel John Dooly and Lieutenant Colonel Elijah Clarke of Georgia defeats a larger force of 700 Loyalist militia commanded by Colonel James Boyd on this day in 1779 at Kettle Creek, Georgia.
The Patriots attempted a...

Sakichi Toyoda, whose textile machinery company spawned the Toyota Motor Corporation, is born in Japan on February 14, 1867. In 2008, Toyota surpassed the American auto giant General Motors (GM) to become the world’s largest automaker.
Referred to as Japan’s Thomas Edison, Sakichi Toyoda invented a variety of weaving machines, including...

On this day in 1864, Union General William T. Sherman enters Meridian, Mississippi, during a winter campaign that served as a precursor to Sherman’s March to the Sea campaign in Georgia. This often-overlooked Mississippi campaign was the first attempt by the Union at total warfare, a strike aimed not just...

At a meeting of the presidents of Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and El Salvador, the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua agrees to free a number of political prisoners and hold free elections within a year; in return, Honduras promises to close bases being used by anti-Sandinista rebels. Within...

Fourmen dressed as police officers enter gangster Bugs Moran’s headquarters on North Clark Street in Chicago, line seven of Moran’s henchmen against a wall, and shoot them to death. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, as it is now called, was the culmination of a gang war between arch rivals Al...

On this day in 2000, a series of tornadoes moves through southern Georgia, wreaking havoc and killing 18 people.
The storm system that swept across the southeastern United States on February 14 was highly unusual. Tornadoes in the United States typically strike on spring afternoons because they are generated by collisions...

On February 14, 1779, Captain James Cook, the great English explorer and navigator, is murdered by natives of Hawaii during his third visit to the Pacific island group.In 1768, Cook, a surveyor in the Royal Navy, was commissioned a lieutenant in command of the HMS Endeavor and led an expedition...

Sir Alexander Fleming was a young bacteriologist when an accidental discovery led to one of the great developments of modern medicine on this day in 1929. Having left a plate of staphylococcus bacteria uncovered, Fleming noticed that a mold that had fallen on the culture had killed many of the...

In Chicago, gunmen in the suspected employment of organized-crime boss Al Capone murder seven members of the George “Bugs” Moran North Siders gang in a garage on North Clark Street. The so-called St. Valentine’s Day Massacre stirred a media storm centered on Capone and his illegal Prohibition-era activities and motivated...

On this day in 1938, the former silent film actress Hedda Hopper pens the first installment of what would become her tremendously influential gossip column in the Los Angeles Times.
Born Elda Furry in 1890, she was the fifth of nine children of Quaker parents living in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. She left...

On this day, fans of Charles Dickens organize the Boz Ball, an elite party for the celebrated writer who had arrived in the United States in January for a five-month tour. (Dickens’ earliest works had been published under the pseudonym Boz.)
Only members of New York’s aristocracy were invited to the...

The B-52’s, one of the strangest and, to fans, most irresistible, pop groups ever to achieve mainstream success, makes its worldwide debut at a Valentine’s Day house party in Athens, GA, on this day in 1977. In their official Warner Brothers bio, the B-52’s described themselves this way: “As a...

Destined to become one of the state’s major exports, the first trainload of oranges grown by southern California farmers leaves Los Angeles via the transcontinental railroad.
The Spanish had established Los Angeles, one of the oldest cities in the Far West, in 1781 to help colonize the region. For several...

On this day in 1884, future President Theodore Roosevelt’s wife and mother die, only hours apart.
Roosevelt was at work in the New York state legislature attempting to get a government reform bill passed when he was summoned home by his family. He returned home to find his mother, Mittie, had...

On February 14, 1988, U.S. speed skater Dan Jansen, a favorite to win the gold medal in the 500-meter race at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, falls during competition, only hours after learning his sister had died of cancer. Jansen suffered disappointment after disappointment in the Olympics, earning him...

President John F. Kennedy authorizes U.S. military advisors in Vietnam to return fire if fired upon. At a news conference, he said, “The training missions we have [in South Vietnam] have been instructed that if they are fired upon, they are of course to fire back, but we have...

Despite an increasingly active antiwar movement, a Gallup Poll shows that a majority of those polled (55 percent) oppose an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam. Those that favored American withdrawal had risen from 21 percent, in a November poll, to 35 percent. President Nixon had taken...

On this day, German General Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps launch an offensive against an Allied defensive line in Tunisia, North Africa. The Kasserine Pass was the site of the United States’ first major battle defeat of the war.
General Erwin Rommel was dispatched to North Africa in February 1942,...